I have teamed up with WhyPark.com to give away either an Amazon Kindle or Acer Aspire Netbook, winner’s choice. This contest is open to both new and existing WhyPark customers.

Enter as many times as you’d like!!!

Just in case you are not familiar with what WhyPark does…

WhyPark quickly builds domains to become living websites. The company’s proprietary system provides new and relevant content daily to clients’ domain names, obtaining search engine visibility for domains instead of relying on type-in traffic or temporary links. WhyPark’s standard service is FREE.

*Images shown above may be different from the actual prize.

How to enter:

1. Add your domain names to WhyPark.com
2. Domain names must be entered into your account by September 10th at 11:59 pm est
3. Domain names must be resolving to WhyPark’s servers by September 10th and continue through September 15th
4. Each domain name moved to WhyPark is considered one entry

That’s it!

The winner will be announced on my weekly news video September 18th. Oh and gentlemen, you know how I announce winners!

ENTER HERE

I’ve heard of a lot of horror stories from both domain owners and domain buyers having issues with PayPal. I personally have not had a negative experience using PayPal, knock on wood. With my readers in mind and my curiosity about their security measures, I spent a little time on the phone today with their customer service and dispute departments to find out who is protected.

Here are some examples of the PayPal issues I’ve heard from domainers:

• Buyer pays for the domain name and seller does not transfer. At the same time the seller withdraws any available money in their account making it impossible to recover those funds.
• Buyer pays for the domain name, seller transfers but then the buyer places a dispute. More often than not PayPal will side with buyers because there is no real way to provide proof of delivery for an intangible item.
• Buyer pays for domain name, seller transfers then buyer files a fraud complaint saying they did not authorize the use of their account.
• I’m sure there are plenty more examples.

I have to say, I really didn’t get a feeling of confidence after talking to PayPal. They have a lot of protection in place for their eBay transactions, but when it comes to domain name (intangible property) transactions they don’t have as much protection. Intangible property is something you own but not a physical substance. Because it’s not a physical substance it creates a problem for delivery confirmation. In the examples above PayPal states they have ways of determining false fraud reports and excellent dispute resolution. However, from the stories and experiences of other domainers, this does not hold true.

For myself, PayPal is an extremely important tool, one that I utilize on a daily basis. My advertisers, clients and buyers use the service to send me money. Although I’ve had thousands of successful transactions with zero issues I have not and will not use PayPal for any domain sale over $500 unless I personally know the buyer.

For transactions over $500 I strongly suggest requesting a bank wire or using a bonded escrow agency such as Escrow.com. Escrow.com has been the industry standard for a very long time.

Now if after reading this you still decide to use PayPal to purchase domain names make sure to use a credit card giving yourself an extra level of protection. Set it so PayPal does not pull funds from your account but instead from your credit card which has purchase protection. This will allow you to not only file a dispute with PayPal but with your credit card company.

As I’ve said before, thieves work harder to steal our money then we do to protect it.

This is exactly how I felt last month. I was mostly renewing domain names and not acquiring new ones. I’ve since made my penance and purchased a few .us and .me domains

Click on the image to enlarge.

GoDaddy is running a sale on domain extensions .us for $4.99 and .info for $0.89. Click here to get yours now.

Here is a link to last week’s comic strip in case you missed it. It was “How The Castello Brothers View A Map”.

I have now been in the domain industry just over a year and still find myself learning new and interesting things every day. Because it’s the weekend I wanted to try something new and share one thing I found interesting during the week.

Did you know that Ron Jackson of DNJournal.com was one of the four founding owners of Bido.com?

I came across an article on Conceptualist.com from December 21, 2007 where Ron Jackson originally announced the new business venture. Only four months after that article was released Ron decided to leave Bido.com, which you can read about on DNJournal.com.

This paragraph from Ron Jackson’s article sums it up the best.

“While Bido.com was an exciting joint venture for me, DNJournal.com remained my primary enterprise. I have been able to report on the industry in the way that I have for the past five years because I have taken time to build key relationships and trust with people and companies in every part of the domain business. As long as I call on them as an independent party, the door is always open. If I had to call on anyone as a potential competitor that would change the dynamic with those parties and make it more difficult for me to do my job at DN Journal.”

A few more fun facts about Ron Jackson:

• Owns over 6,000 domain names
• DNJournal.com online since January 1, 2003
• Owned a music business from 1988-2000
• Sports journalist for Fox TV after starting off as a weatherman for ABC in the 70’s and 80’s
• Drafted during the Vietnam War posted to the military newspaper and radio

Let me know what you think. Would you like to see more articles like this on Saturdays?

The following article is a guest post by my friend and fellow domain blogger Morgan Linton. Morgan is the publisher of Domainvestors.tv as well as author of Domain Flipping available at DNFlipping.com.

Many new Domainers are oftentimes overwhelmed with all the information online related to Domaining. This oftentimes leads people to begin buying domains in hopes that someday these domains will be worth money since it seems like so many people are making money in the industry. What these new Domainers miss is the amount of time and energy professional Domainers put into research and development. To put this into a real-world context – this could easily be compared to the housing speculation bust that just took-place in the United States. Many people were inspired by news stories that people were making millions in real estate. While it is true that people were making millions, many people just started buying old dilapidated houses thinking that they were on the road to financial independence.

We all know what happened with the real estate market – and the same is true in the Domaining world since Domain Names are in essence, virtual real estate. The first lesson here is that owning a large portfolio of domains names does not necessarily mean you have made a valuable investment. Many people get started in the Domaining world buying a ton of Domains that sound great to them without considering the actual re-sale value of the domains. Then, when they find that each year they are paying hundreds or thousands of dollars in renewal fees without making any sales they get discouraged and feel like “all the good domains are taken.”

So what can you do to avoid this situation? It’s actually not as hard as you might think – but it does take time. Domaining is not an industry that is great for getting rich overnight – instead if you look at the key players in the industry they all work hard and have valuable online investments. One of the first places all new Domainers should go to learn more about the industry and get a feel for what prices domains are selling for is DNJournal.com. DNJournal is a great place to both read industry news and determine which domains names are currently selling online and where the domains are sold.

As a beginner it is good to look at domains selling in a lower price range as you can’t expect to start buying and selling six-figure domains from the beginning. When you look at the sales list try to get a feel for what makes a valuable domain. You will notice that domains like “IWantACar.com” sell for much less than “BuyCar.com” – it is absolutely imperative that as a new Domainer you understand what a difference even a single letter can make in the value of a domain name. Also, pay careful attention to where these domains are sold – this will help you become instantly familiar with the main services people use to sell their domain names.

Before you buy a domain – take a look at both DNJournal and NameBio to get a feel for what your domain name might be worth. NameBio is a great tool that allows you to search for past sales. If you are buying “NewToothbrush.com” you can look on NameBio for other domains that sold with the word “Toothbrush” in it to get a feel for the price-range your domain will fall within. You can also look at domains with the word “New” in it to see how this word can impact the final selling price of a domain.

One of the best ways to learn about Domaining is from other Domainers and there are now plenty of professional Domainers who run blogs with great information applicable to both new and experience Domain investors. There is no better way to learn about Domaining than from Domainers themselves and there are so many blogs to choose from that new Domainers can easily get a number of unique perspectives on this growing industry. Blog aggregators like Domaining.com, NameBee.com and DNHeadlines.com can save you time by displaying Domaining blogs together on one page organized by the most recently updated blog. If you read an article you like or have a question you can always post your comments and interact directly with the publisher.

At the end of the day it is always better to take your time to learn more about any market before you jump into it. If you take your time to learn more about which domains are selling and how Domainers are running their businesses you can avoid repeating the mistakes many Domainers make when starting-out. Then again, you’re bound to make mistakes along the way and learning from these mistakes will only help you become a better Domainer.